Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.

com/abstract=1156620
Volatility Dispersion Trading
QIAN DENG

January 2008
ABSTRACT
This papers studies an options trading strategy known as dispersion strategy
to investigate the apparent risk premium for bearing correlation risk in the op-
tions market. Previous studies have attributed the prots to dispersion trading to
the correlation risk premium embedded in index options. The natural alternative
hypothesis argues that the protability results from option market ineciency.
Institutional changes in the options market in late 1999 and 2000 provide a nat-
ural experiment to distinguish between these hypotheses. This provides evidence
supporting the market ineciency hypothesis and against the risk-based hypoth-
esis since a fundamental market risk premium should not change as the market
structure changes.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (email: qiandeng@uiuc.edu). I thank Tim Johnson,

Neil Pearson, Allen Poteshman, Joshua White and seminar participants at the University of Illinois for
comments.
Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1156620
I. Introduction
There is growing empirical evidence that index options, especially index puts, appear to
be more expensive than their theoretical Black-Scholes prices (Black and Scholes (1973)
and Merton (1973)), while individual stock options do not appear to be too expensive
(see for instance Bakshi and Kapadia (2003), Bakshi, Kapadia, and Madan (2003),
Bollen and Whaley (2004), among others.
1
). An options trading strategy known as
dispersion trading is designed to capitalize on this overpricing of index options relative
to individual options and has become very popular. Two hypotheses have been put
forward in the literature to explain the source of the protability of dispersion strategy.
The risk-based hypothesis argues that the index options are more expensive relative
to individual stock options because they bear some risk premium that is absent from
individual stock options. An alternative hypothesis is market ineciency, which argues
that options market demand and supply drive option premiums to deviate from their
theoretical values. The options market structural changes during late 1999 and 2000
provides a natural experiment to distinguish between these two hypotheses. If the
protability comes from some risk factors priced in index options but not in individual
equity options, then there should be no change in the protability following the change
in market structure. Our paper investigates the performance of dispersion trading from
1996 to 2005 and nds that the strategy is quite protable through the year 2000, after
which the protability disappears. These ndings provide evidence in support of the
market ineciency hypothesis and against the risk-based explanation.
Dispersion trading is a popular options trading strategy that involves selling options
on an index and buying options on individual stocks that comprise the index. As noted
in the documentation of EGAR Dispersion ASP
2
, Volatility dispersion trading is es-
1
See also Branger and Schlag (2004), Dennis and Mayhew (2002) and Dennis, Mayhew and Stivers
(2005)
2
EGAR Techonology is a nancial technology company that provides specialized capi-
tal markets software solutions, among which Dispersion ASP is designed to provide techni-
cal analysis to help with dispersion trading strategies. The citation could be found at
http : //www.egartech.com/research dispersion trading.asp.
1
sentially a hedged strategy designed to take advantage of relative value dierences in
implied volatilities between an index and a basket of component stocks. It typically in-
volves short option positions on an index, against which long option positions are taken
on a set of components of the index. It is common to see a short position of a straddle or
near-ATM strangle on the index and long positions of straddles or strangles on 30% to
40% of the stocks that make up the index. The exposure to volatility risk from the long
leg of the strategy on individual stock options tends to be canceled by that of the short
leg in index options. In addition, at-the-money straddle or out-of-the-money strangle
positions have delta exposures very close to zero. Therefore, by construction, a disper-
sion strategy that buys index straddles/strangles and sells straddle/strangle positions
on individual components is hedged against large market movement and has low volatil-
ity risk, which makes it an ideal candidate to bet on the dierences between implied
volatilities of index and individual options.
One strand of literature has argued that the dierences in the pricing of index and
individual equity options evidence that various risks, such as volatility risks and correla-
tions risks, are priced dierently in index options and individual stock options. Bakshi,
Kapadia and Madan (2003) relate the dierential pricing of index and individual options
to the dierence in the risk-neutral skewness of their underlying distributions. Moreover,
in Bakshi and Kapadia (2003), they show that individual stocks risk-neutral distribu-
tions are dierent from the market index because the market volatility risk premium,
though priced in both individual options and index options, is much smaller for the
individual options and idiosyncratic volatility does not get priced. Recently, Driessen,
Maenhout and Vilkov (2006) argue that the prots to dispersion trading results from
a risk premium that index options bear and is absent from individual options. They
develop a model of priced correlation risk and show that the model generates several
empirical implications, including index option returns that are less than individual op-
tion returns, which are consistent with previous empirical ndings. Thus, they claim
2
that correlation risk premium is negative and index options, especially index puts, are
more expensive because they hedge correlation risk.
Another avenue of investigation attributes the puzzle of dierential pricing between
index and equity options to the limitations or constraints of the market participants
in trading options. According to Bollen and Whaley (2004), the net buying pressure
present in the index options market drives the index options prices to be higher. Under
ideal dynamic replication, an options price and implied volatility should be unaected no
matter how large the demand is. In reality, due to limits of arbitrage (Shleifer and Vishny
(1997), Liu and Longsta (2000)), a market maker will not sell an unlimited amount
of certain option contracts at a given option premium. As he builds up his position in
a particular option, his hedging costs and volatility-risk exposure also increase, and he
is forced to charge a higher price. Bollen and Whaley show that changes in the level
of an options implied volatility are positively related to variation in demand for the
option, and then argue that demand for out-of-the-money puts to hedge against stock
market declines pushes up implied volatilities on low strike options in the stock index
options market. Garleanu, Pedersen and Poteshman (2006) complement Bollen and
Whaley s hypothesis by modelling option equilibrium prices as a function of demand
pressure. Their model shows that demand pressure in a particular option raises its
prices as well as the prices of other options on the same underlying. Empirically, it is
documented that the demand pattern for single-stock options is very dierent from that
of index options. Both Garleanu, Pedersen and Poteshman (2006) and Lakonishok, Lee,
Pearson, and Poteshman (2007) show that end users are net short single-stock options
but net long index options. Thus single-stock options appear cheaper and their smile is
atter compared to index options.
Therefore, the existing literature has dierent explanations regarding the expensive-
ness of index versus individual options. The institutional changes that happened to
the options market around late 1999 and 2000, including cross-listing of options, the
launch of the International Securities Exchange, a Justice Department investigation and
3
settlement, and a marked reduction in bid-oer spreads, provide a natural experiment
that allows one to distinguish between these hypotheses. Specically, these changes in
the market environment reduced the costs of arbitraging any dierential pricing of indi-
vidual equity and index options via dispersion trading. If the protability of dispersion
trading is due to miss-pricing of index options relative to individual equity options, one
would expect the protability of dispersion trading to be much reduced after 2000. In
contrast, if the protability of dispersion trading is compensation for a fundamental risk
factor, the change in the option market structure should not aect the protability of
this strategy.
In this paper, we investigate the performance of dispersion trading from 1996 to
2005 and examine whether the prots to dispersion strategy decreased after 2000. We
nd that dispersion trading is quite protable through the year 2000, after which the
protability disappears.
We initially examine the risk/return prole of a simple dispersion trading strategy
that writes the at-the-money (ATM) straddles of S&P 500 and buys the ATM straddles
of S&P 500 components. We nd the average monthly return decreases from 24% over
1996 to 2000 to 0.03% over 2001 to 2005. Moreover, the Sharpe ratio also decreased
from 1.2 to 0.17, and Jensens alpha decreases from 0.29 to 0.04. A test of structural
change supports the changing protability hypothesis as well. These results suggests that
the dierential pricing of index versus individual stock option must have been caused at
least partially by option markets ineciency.
Next, we investigate several rened dispersion strategies that are designed to deliver
improved trading performance and check whether the changing protability results are
aected. First, we examine a more complicated dispersion trading strategy that takes
into the account the change of correlation over time by conditioning the trades on a
comparison between the implied correlation, an average correlation measure inferred
from the implied volatilities of index options and individual options, and forecasted
correlation, which are estimates of future realized correlation. Second, due to concerns
4
about liquidity and transaction costs, we further restrict the equity options traded to be
a subset of the index components. Principal Component Analysis is used to determine
the most eective 100 individual stocks that capture the main movement of the index.
Third, we examine a delta-neutral strategy that will hedge daily the delta positions
of the dispersion strategy using underlying stocks. Finally, we examine the dispersion
strategy that buys at-the-money individual straddles and writes out-of-the-money index
strangles, which are suggested to be the cheapest individual options and most expensive
index options (see, for example, Bollen and Whaley (2004) and Garleanu, Pedersen and
Poteshman (2006)). The Sharpe ratio increases to 0.89 after transaction costs for this
strategy, which is in line with the demand/supply explanation for the dierential pricing
puzzle.
We nd that the performance for all the rened dispersion strategies improved as
expected. However, we have the same results as the simplest strategy that the protabil-
ity disappears after 2000. These results imply that the changing of market conditions
around late 1999 and 2000 has led to the prots to dispersion strategy to be arbitraged
away, which suggests that correlation risk premium cannot fully explain the dierential
pricing between index options and individual options. The improved market environ-
ment should have no eect on any fundamental market risk premium and therefore
would not have changed the protability of a trading strategy if prots are driven by
correlation risk premium. Hence, we nd evidence in support of the market ineciency
hypothesis.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section II describes that data used
for the empirical analysis. Section III describes the properties of the dispersion strategy
and provides an overview of the regulatory changes that aected option markets around
late 1999 and 2000. Section IV provides the methodological details and presents the
returns of a naive dispersion strategy. Section V presents empirical results of several
improved version of dispersion strategies. Section VI discusses the implication of the
results and provides further validations. Section VII briey summarizes and concludes.
5
II. Data
The empirical investigation focuses on the dispersion trading strategy using S&P 500
index options and individual options on all the stocks included in the index. We obtained
options data from the OptionMetrics Ivy database. For each option, we have the option
id number, closing bid and ask prices, implied volatility, delta, vega, expiration date,
strike price, trading volume, and a call/put identier. Our options data cover the 10-year
period from January 1996 to December 2005. Stock prices, returns, shares outstanding,
as well as dividend and split information for the same time period are from the Center
for Research in Security Prices (CRSP). Because we focus on options with one month
to expiration, we use one-month LIBOR rate from DataStream as the risk-free interest
rate.
The S&P 500 is a value-weighted index that includes a representative sample of 500
leading companies in leading industries of the U.S. economy. The list of constituent
companies may change over time whenever a company is deleted from the index in favor
of another. In our sample, 288 such additions and deletions took place. We reconstruct
the index components and corresponding index weights for the entire sample period.
The weight for stock i is calculated as the market value (from CRSP) of company i
divided by the total market value of all companies that are present in the index.
To minimize the impact of recording errors, the options data were screened to elim-
inate (i) bid-ask option pairs with missing quotes, or zero bids, or for which the oer
price is lower than the bid price, and (ii) option prices violating arbitrate restrictions.
Table 1 summarizes the average option prices, measured as the average of the bid and
ask quotes, open interest, volume, and bid-ask spread ratio measured as bid-ask spread
over bid-ask midpoint for both index and individual calls and puts for 7 moneyness
categories, for which K/S varies from 0.85 to 1.15. Consistent with previous studies
(e.g., Garleanu, Pedersen and Poteshman (2006)), out-of-the-money put options and in-
the-money call options have the highest trading volume and open interest among index
6
options. For individual stock options, at-the-money call options and put options have
the highest volume and open interest. Compared to the index options, the volume and
open interest are more evenly distributed among all moneyness categories for individual
equity options. In addition, all options have quite high transaction costs. The median
bid-ask spread ratio is 6.78% for index options and 9.52% for individual options.
One of the improved dispersion trading strategy is implemented based on a com-
parison between implied correlation ( the average correlation among index component
stocks implied from option premiums) and benchmark correlation forecasts. The com-
putation of implied correlation requires data on implied volatilities of SPX index options
and individual options on SPX components. We obtain implied volatilities directly from
OptionMetrics for call options and put options with the same strike price and are closest
to at-the-money. We then average these two implied volatilities as the implied volatility
measure. Two volatility measures are used to derive benchmark correlation forecast
estimates to compare with implied correlation. The rst one is the historical volatility
measure. The historical variance is calculated as the sum of squared daily returns over
the 22-day window prior to the investment date. We get daily returns for individual
stocks and for the S&P 500 from CRSP and OptionMetrics respectively. The other
volatility measure is the predicted volatility over the remaining life of the option from
a GARCH(1,1) model estimated over ve years of daily underlying stock returns lead-
ing up to the day of investment. Both measures are transformed into annual terms in
calculation.
III. Dispersion trading and the options market
A. Dispersion trading strategies
In the subsection I argue that options market has become more competitive since the
structural changes around 1999 and 2000. This exogenous eciency improvement event
7
provides a natural experiment to test whether the prots to dispersion trading are driven
by the correlation risk premium embedded in index options or result from the mispricing
of index options relative to individual equity options.
As described earlier in Section I, dispersion strategy involves short index options
positions, against which long positions are taken on individual options of index compo-
nents. For an index I =

N
i=1

i
S
i
, assume that each individual component stock follows
a geometric Brownian motion,
dS
i
=
i
S
i
dt +
i
S
i
dW
i
(1)
where W
i
is a standard Wiener process. The variance of the index can be approximately
calculated from the following formula

2
I
=
N

i=1

2
i

2
i
+ 2
N

i=1

j>i

ij
(2)
where
2
I
is the index variance,
i
for i = 1, 2, ..., N is the weights for stock i,
2
i
is the
individual stock variance, and
ij
is the pairwise correlation between the returns of stock
i and stock j. Assuming that =
ij
for i = j, i, j = 1, ...N, equation (2) allows us to
solve for a measure of average correlation if we know the volatilities of all constituents
and the index. In particular, the implied average correlation is
=

2
I

N
i=1

2
i

2
i
2

N
i=1

j>i

j
. (3)
Since the dispersion strategy involves long positions on individual volatilities and short
positions on index volatility, it will make prots when the realized volatilities of individ-
ual stocks are high and the realized volatility of the index is low. In other words, the
strategy loses little on the short side and makes a lot on the long side if large disper-
sion among constituent stocks is achieved. This will happen when the realized average
correlation turns out to be lower than implied correlation. Thus the main source of risk
8
that this strategy is exposed to can be interpreted as the variation of correlation between
individual component stocks.
Therefore, the prots to dispersion strategy could possibly come from the negative
correlation risk premium, as argued by Driessen, Maenhout and Vilkov (2006). On the
other hand, the prots could come from the overpricing of index options relative to
individual stock options, or maybe both. As long as the overpriced index volatilities
play a part here, this implies that options market is inecient. And the reasons behind
overpricing could be the excessive institutional demand of index options for portfolio
protection and the supply of individual stock options by covered call writing. Previous
studies, such as Bollen and Whaley (2004) and Garleanu, Pedersen and Poteshman
(2006) have found empirical evidence supporting that the demand and supply in options
market could push option prices to levels inconsistent with the usual no-arbitrage pricing
relations. In this paper, we would like to distinguish between these two possibilities. The
structural changes that happened to the options market around late 1999 and 2000 turns
out to be a natural experiment that can help accomplish this task.
B. Options market structural changes
Since late 1999, options markets have experienced a series of dramatic changes in the
regulatory and competitive environment. These changes are described thoroughly in
Defontnouvelle et al. (2000). Here, we summarize the major relevant aspects. In 1999,
the U.S. Department of Justice initiated an investigation focusing on whether options
exchanges had reached an implicit agreement to not compete for trading ows of options
that are previously listed on other exchanges. After that, class action lawsuits were led
against the exchanges alleging anticompetitive practices. In addition, SEC instituted
administrative proceedings and requested a market linkage plan to be proposed to im-
prove options markets execution quality. In response to these actions, the four option
exchanges (AMEX, CBOE, PCX and PHLX) began to cross list many options that had
9
been exclusively listed on another exchange. The listing campaign started on August
18,1999, when CBOE and AMEX announced the listing of DELL options, which had
been previously listed only on the PHLX. Soon, a series of sizable competitive listings an-
nouncements were made by all four exchanges. De Fontnouvelle, Fishe and Harris (2003)
show that 37% of equity option volume had shifted from single- to multiple-exchange
trading by the end of September 1999. And this eect continued in the following year.
In September 2000, four exchanges reached an anti-trust settlement that require them
to spend $77 million on surveillance and enforcement of trading rules. The class action
suit was also settled around the same time. Moreover, the International Securities Ex-
change (ISE), an all electronic options market, was launched in May 2000, which further
intensied competition in options market. By October 2000, the ISE traded almost all
active options classes.
Several papers have studied the eects of these structural changes and have shown
that the options market execution quality improved a lot after them. De Fontnouvelle,
Fishe and Harris (2003) study the bid-ask spreads for 28 option classes that were multi-
ply listed in August 1999. They nd that, immediately after multiple listing, the average
eective spread fell 31.3% and 38.7% for calls and puts respectively. Quoted spreads fell
by more than 50%. The reductions are also relatively permanent with little reversion
after one year. Their evidence supports the hypothesis that the interexchange compe-
tition increased after the structural changes in 1999 and 2000 had reduced the option
transaction costs dramatically. In related work, Hansch and Hatheway (2001) examine
the trade and quote data for 50 of the most active equity option classes between Au-
gust 1999 and October 2000. They nd that trade-through rates (trade-throughs occur
when trades execute at prices outside of prevailing quotes), quoted spreads, and eective
spreads fall signicantly between August 1999 and October 2000. Therefore, the existing
evidence shows that the institutional changes around late 1999 and 2000 had made the
options market more ecient. As stated in SEC concept release (No. 34-49175, Section
II.C),Exchange transaction fees for customers have all but disappeared. Spreads are
10
narrower. Markets have expanded and enhanced the services they oer and introduced
innovations to improve their competitiveness.
To check whether the bid-ask spreads for our sample have also become narrower after
the institutional changes , we examine the bid-ask spread ratios of our sample option
series from 1996 to 2005. Figure 1 displays the trend of the monthly median spread
ratios for call options and put options respectively. Both graphs show a clear drop of
the median spread ratios around 2000. In addition, the drop is not temporary, as the
spread ratios maintained the lower level through 2005. We further test whether the
drop is statistically signicant. Table 2 shows that the median bid-ask spread for call
options is 10.86% before 2001. After 2001, it decreases to 7.62%. A t-test of mean
dierence returns 10.10, which strongly rejects the hypothesis that the spread ratio did
not change. Similarly, we nd the average bid-ask spreads for put options drop from
12.78% to 9.12%, also with a strongly signicant t-statistic of 8.46. Our results are
consistent with previous studies that the bid-ask spreads became much smaller after the
multiple listings and introduction of the ISE. The trading volume of options have also
increased dramatically. The average trading volume for call options is 111 before 2001,
which goes up to 356.8 after 2001. Therefore, it is conrmed that option market has
become more ecient since 2001 and reduction in the transaction costs of options has
attracted a lot more funds to enter option market. These option market changes reduced
the cost of dispersion trading, and thus suggest the possibility that the protability of
dispersion trading was arbitraged away.
Thus, investigating whether its return/protability has changed since 2001 allows us
to examine the source of prots to dispersion trading.We expect to observe a change in
the protability of dispersion strategy around 2000 if the market ineciency hypothesis
is true. Otherwise, if the prots to dispersion trading are a fundamental market risk
premium for bearing correlation risk, changing market conditions and entry of capital
into the options market should not have aected the protability.
11
IV. A Naive Dispersion Strategy
In this section, we describe the implementation details of a naive dispersion strategies
and compare its return for the pre-2000 period and post-2000 periods. Starting from
January, 1996, on the rst trading day following options expiration date of each month,
a portfolio of near-ATM straddles on S&P500 index is sold and a portfolio of near-ATM
straddles on S&P500 component stocks is bought. All options traded in this strategy
expire in the next month (with approximately one-month expiration). We hold the
portfolio until the expiration date, realize the gains/losses and then make investment
on the next trading day following expiration. This is repeated every month, giving us a
total of 120 non-overlapping trading periods of either 4 or 5 weeks in length, over the
whole 10-year sample period from 1996 to 2005.
We choose approximately at-the-money (ATM) straddle positions to trade because
a straddle position is not sensitive to the underlying stock movement (low delta) while
subject to the volatility change of its underlying stock. We select call options and put
options with the strike price and closest to the stock price as of the investment date.
Denote t as the investment date and T as the expiration date. The payo
long
t,T
from
the long side of this strategy is

long
t,T
=
N

i=1
n
i,t
|S
i,T
K
i,t
|, (4)
where S
i,T
is the price of stock i at expiration T, K
i,t
is the strike price, and n
i,t
is
the number of individual straddles traded at t. The payo from the short side of the
straddle is

short
t,T
= |S
I,T
K
I,t
|, (5)
12
where S
I,T
and K
I,t
are the index level at expiration and the index option strike price,
respectively. We dene n
i,t
as
n
i,t
=
N
i,t
S
I,t

i=1
N
i,t
S
i,t
, (6)
where N
i,t
is the number of shares outstanding of stock i. Because S
I,t
=

N
i=1
n
i,t
S
i,t
,
we choose n
i,t
as the number of shares bought for the straddle on index component i
so that the payo of the index straddle is matched as closely as possible to the total
payo of the individual straddles. In this way, the strategy, by construction, is protected
against large stock market movement.
The return of the strategy over the risk-free rate is calculated as follows:
R
t,T
=
_

_
V
T
V
t
V
t
e
r(Tt)
if V
t
0,

V
T
V
t
V
t
+e
r(Tt)
if V
t
< 0,
where V
T
=
long
t,T

short
t,T
is the payo from the portfolio at expiration, V
t
=

N
i=1
n
i,t
(Call
i,t
+
Put
i,t
) (Call
I,t
+Put
I,t
) is the initial price paid for the portfolio,r is the continuously
compounded one-month LIBOR rate at investment date (where the proceeds is invested
in a risk free asset if V
t
< 0.
In this strategy, the index options are European-style and individual options are
American-style. Therefore, assuming the option portfolio is hold till expiration might
underestimate the resulting returns since we are selling index options and buying in-
dividual options. Subsection B.1 below demonstrates that the bias from ignoring the
American-style exercise of the individual equity options is too small to aect our con-
clusions.
Net of transaction costs, the rate of return is
NR
t,T
= R
t,T


t
|V
t
|
, (7)
13
where
t
is the transaction costs (being half the bid-ask spread) at initial investment.
We calculate the rate of return for all other versions of dispersion strategies in the same
fashion.
A. Returns
Panel A of Table 3 summarizes the resulting returns of the naive dispersion strategy
over the sample period. The Sharpe ratio is shown to measure the protability of the
resulting return series. Because Sharpe ratio works best if the return follows a normal
distribution, we also test the normality of the resulting return series. Besides, we reports
the regression coecients of the following two regressions:
NR
t
= +(R
m,t
R
f,t
) +
t
, (8)
where NR
t
is the excess return on the dispersion strategy at investment date t and
R
m,t
R
f,t
is the market excess return at t, and
NR
t
= +(R
m,t
R
f,t
) +(
2
realized

2
modelfree
) +
t
, (9)
where
2
realized
is the realized return variance of S&P 500 over the month and
2
modelfree
is an estimate of the model-free variance of measured as VIX from CBOE, both scaled
by a factor of 100. equation (8) is the CAPM regression which examines the return
of the dispersion strategy controlling for the market risk factor. equation (9) extends
equation (8) by adding a factor that mimics the volatility risk. Carr and Wu (2008)
have shown that variance risk premium can be quantied as the dierence between the
realized variance and a synthetic variance swap rate (VIX in the case of S&P 500).
Therefore, we add
2
realized

2
modelfree
to CAPM regression to control for both the
market risk and the volatility risk. If the strategy is protable, the intercepts should be
signicantly positive for both regressions.
14
As seen from the table, over the 120 trading periods, the dispersion strategy yields
an average monthly return of 10.7%, with a t-statistic of 1.867. Its Sharpe ratio is
0.59, which is slightly higher than the Sharpe ratio of S&P 500 index (0.47 over the
same sample period). The normality test supports the hypothesis that the return is
normally distributed. Therefore, the usage of Sharpe ratio as a performance measure is
justied. Alpha from CAPM regression is 0.113, with a t-statistic of 1.92. When the
volatility risk factor is added to the regression, alpha drops to 0.03 with a t-statistic of
0.49. We nd that the coecient on the volatility risk factor is 0.06 and signicant.
This implies that the volatility risk of the short positions on the index options are not
canceled completely by the long positions on the individual equity options. The strategy
still loads quite a bit on the volatility risk premium. It is also worth mentioning that
the coecient of the market factor becomes more negative after volatility risk factor is
taken into account. This could be explained by the negative correlation between the
market factor and the volatility risk factor (Carr and Wu (2008)). Overall, the naive
strategy is only marginally protable over the whole sample period. When both market
risk and volatility risk are controlled, the strategy does not generate abnormal returns.
To investigate whether the protability of the dispersion strategy changed around
the end of 2000, we reexamine the performance of the strategy over two subperiods,
19962000 and 20012005. We nd a dramatic dierence in the performance over the
two subperiods. The naive dispersion strategy is quite protable over the subperiod
19962000. The average monthly return is 24% with a t-statistic of 2.68. The Sharpe
ratio is 1.2 and the intercepts from the two regressions are both signicantly positive,
being 0.29 and 0.20 respectively. However, the protability appears to disappear over the
subperiod 20012005, during which the average return becomes 2%, the Sharpe ratio
drops to 0.17 and the intercepts from equation (8) and equation (9) decrease to 0.04
and 0.12, respectively. All performance measures suggest that the naive dispersion
strategy performed poorly over the subperiod 20012005.
15
Another interesting nding is that the beta coecients change from a large negative
number to close to 0 over the two subperiods. We take this as some evidence in support
of the market ineciency hypothesis that we discussed earlier in Section III. A negative
beta coecient means that the return of the strategy is negatively correlated with the
market return. Since the demand for portfolio protection and thus for index put options
is usually higher during market down turns, it is possible that index options are more
overpriced during bear market period and the dispersion strategy will be negatively
correlated with the market return, as is the case for the pre-2000 period. After 2000, the
market gets more ecient and the arbitrage prots were traded away. Thus the returns
of the strategy are not correlated with the market return any more.
We further test whether this change of protability is statistically signicant. Three
tests are implemented and reported in Table 4. First, a basic t-test of dierence in
average returns is calculated. The test statistic is 2.36, which suggests that the return
of the dispersion strategy is signicantly lower over the period 20012005. Next, we run
the following regression:
NR
t
= +(R
m,t
R
f,t
) + I(t 2001) +
t
, (10)
where I(t 2001) is a dummy variable indicating whether the time period is after 2000.
We nd the estimation coecient to be 0.28 with a p-value of 0.015. This means
that is 28% smaller over the time period after 2000 than before 2000. Last, we add
the variance risk factor:
NR
t
= +(R
m,t
R
f,t
) +(
2
realized

2
modelfree
) + I(t 2001) +
t
. (11)
Consistently, we nd that is 0.31 with a p-value of 0.006. Therefore, we nd that the
protability of the naive dispersion strategy has disappeared after 2000, which agrees
with the market ineciency hypothesis. If the prots to dispersion strategy results
exclusively from the correlation risk embedded in index options, there is no reason for
16
the prots to go away as the market structure changes around 2000. On the other
hand, if market ineciency explains the source of the prots to dispersion strategy, it
is likely that improved market competitiveness make the dispersion opportunities to be
arbitraged away.
B. Robustness checks
B.1. Does early-exercise matter?
The naive dispersion strategy involves writing (European) index options and buying
(American) options on the component stocks. We calculate the return of this strategy
assuming that all options are held to expiration and ignore the possibility of early exercise
of the purchased equity options. This is likely to understate the returns of the strategy.
However, we are mostly interested in whether the protability diered before and after
2000. This issue can aect the main result only if the bias due to ignoring the possible
early exercise of the American options diers before and after 2000, which seems unlikely.
Nonetheless, to address this concern, we recalculate the returns of the strategy taking
into account the early exercise premium of the American options. Assuming the total
early exercise premium is x, the return of the strategy adjusted for the American features
of the individual options is now calculated as
R
A
t,T
=
_

_
V
T
V
t
V
t
x
e
r(Tt)
if V
t
0,

V
T
V
t
V
t
x
+e
r(Tt)
if V
t
< 0.
The net return after transaction costs NR
A
t,T
is dened in the same fashion as before.
We estimate the early exercise premium as the dierence between the option price
(bid-ask midpoint) and the Black-Scholes model price of an otherwise identical option
using the implied volatility provided by OptionMetrics. For the sample options traded in
the naive dispersion strategy, about 12.2% of them have positive early exercise premia,
17
with 4.36% call options and 7.84% put options. The premia are on average 4.5% of
the option price. Panel B of Table 3 reports the return of the naive dispersion strategy
when the early exercise premia are included in return calculation. We observe that the
resulting performance of the strategy change only slightly. The average returns, Sharpe
ratios, and alphas all get slightly better. Yet the dierence in protability before and
after 2000 still remain signicant. The tests of changing protability shown in Table 4
are almost the same as previous results. Therefore, the early exercise eect is minimal,
and ignoring the early exercise feature of the individual stock option does not have any
impact on our results.
3
B.2. Does the selection of break points matter?
The series of structural changes to the options market did not happen simultaneously.
As discussed in Section III, the competition for trade ows rst started on August 18th,
1999. It leads to the shift and increase of the trading volume for option series that were
previously singly-listed. As shown in De Fontnouvelle, Fishe and Harris (2002), this
eect went on until 2000. In addition, the introduction of the ISE in May 2000 and the
anti-trust settlement among four exchanges in September 2000 continued to enhance the
competitiveness of options market through the end of 2000. Thus the exact break point
that should be used bit ambiguous.
To show that our results are not sensitive to the choice of the break point, we re-
examine the performance of the naive dispersion strategy using two other break points:
(i) September 1999, and (ii) January 2002. The rst break point is the earliest plau-
sible time. Options cross listings began in August 1999 and continued until the end
of September 1999. De Fontnouvelle, Fishe and Harris (2002) show that 37% of all
equity option volume had shifted from single- to multiple-exchange trading by the end
of September. In addition, the quoted and eective spreads decreased a signicantly
3
We also recalculate the returns for all other dispersion strategies in the paper and nd no signicant
changes.
18
between the pre-multiple-listing period in August 1999 (8/2/1999 to 8/20/1999) and
the immediate post-multiple-listing period running through the end of September 1999.
Thus, September 1999 is selected as the earliest possible time point for market eciency
improvement. The second break point is selected because January 2002 is the deadline
that the SEC set the for implementation of the linkage plan for option exchanges. Han-
sch and Hatheway (2001) show that trade-through rates, quoted spreads and eective
spreads fell between August 1999 and June 2000. Further, Battallo, Hatch and Jen-
nings (2004) complement their study and nd that the these execution quality measures
decrease again between June 2000 and January 2002. Therefore, we choose January
2002 as the latest plausible time point to examine whether the trading performance of
dispersion strategies reduced signicantly.
The returns of the naive dispersion strategy based on dierent breakpoints are pre-
sented in Panel C and Panel D of Table 3. For both breakpoints, we nd the same pattern
as the original breakpoint (December/2000), i.e. the strategy yields a signicant higher
return before the breakpoint and then becomes unprotable. For the rst breakpoint,
the average return is 0.27 and 0.01 respectively for the pre- and post-breakpoint periods,
almost the same as those for the original breakpoint (0.24). For the second breakpoint,
the average return is 0.17 and 0.001 before and after the breakpoint. This suggests that
the performance of the strategy seems to have been getting worse gradually from the
start of the structural change to the end, especially during 2001. Thus, when January
2002 is selected as the breakpoint, the mean return during the pre-breakpoint period
is dragged down because of the deteriorating performance of the strategy in 2001. The
tests of structural change in Table 4 conrm our prediction. All three tests are strongly
signicant for the rst breakpoint (September/1999). The tests are marginally signi-
cant using the second breakpoint because of the lowered returns generated during 2001.
These ndings also suggest that the prots to the dispersion strategy were not arbitraged
away suddenly right after the cross listings in late 1999. It is until the end of 2000 that
19
the prots nally disappeared. Our selection of the breakpoint (December/2000) is
therefore appropriate.
V. Improved Dispersion Strategies
In last section, we show that a naive dispersion strategy is protable before 2000 and
then loses its protability. Now, we will make several eorts to improve the trading
performance via more sophisticated dispersion strategies and examine whether the prof-
itability still decreases signicantly before and after 2000.
A. Dispersion Trading Conditional on Correlation
Essentially, a dispersion trading strategy takes long positions on the volatility of index
constituents and short positions on index volatility. In general, index options are priced
quite high compared to individual options. As a result, the index implied volatility
is so high that the implied correlation calculated from equation (3) is higher than the
realized correlation between individual stocks. One makes money on the dispersion
strategy because prots on the long side exceed losses on the short side most of the
time. However, there are also periods when the reverse scenario occurred. In that case,
the dispersion trade tends to lose money, and it is the reverse dispersion trade that we
should take. Therefore, to optimize the strategy, we want to make our trading strategies
conditional on the implied correlation estimates from the option prices.
To implement this strategy, on each trading date, we compare implied correlation
with two benchmark correlation forecast measures of future realized correlation and
decide whether the dispersion trade or the reverse dispersion trade should be undertaken.
We derive the two benchmark measures of future correlation by plugging into equa-
tion (3) either (i) historical volatilities or (ii) volatilities forecasts using GARCH(1,1)
20
models. The historical volatilities are calculated as the sum of squared daily log-returns
over the 22 trading days prior to the investment date:
RV
t
=
22

i=1
r
2
ti
. (12)
For GARCH-forecasted volatility, we rst estimate the following GARCH(1,1) model
using log daily returns over the 5 years prior to the investment date:
r
t
= +a
t
,
a
t
=
t

t
,

2
t
=
0
+
1
a
2
t1
+
1

2
t1
, (13)
where
t
N(0, 1). Then we forecast the volatility over the remaining life of the option
as
GV
t
=
T

h=1

2
t+h
, (14)
where T is the length of maturity of the option and

2
t+1
=
0
+
1
a
2
t
+
1

2
t
,

2
t+h
=
0
+ (
1
+
1
)
2
t+h1
, for 1 < h T. (15)
We then enter either the dispersion or the reverse dispersion trade based on a com-
parison of implied correlation and forecasted correlation on the investment date. Specif-
ically,
if FC
t
> (1.10)IC
t
, enter the dispersion trade (long index straddles and short individ-
ual straddles. Alternatively, if FC
t
(1.10)IC
t
, then short dispersion (long individual
straddles and short index straddles).
Here, FC
t
and IC
t
are the forecasted correlation (HC
t
or GC
t
) and implied correla-
tion at investment date respectively. Because there is on average a long dispersion bias
21
(meaning implied correlation is higher than realized correlation), we only reverse the
trades if the forecasted correlation is at least 10% higher than the implied correlation.
Since the reverse trades will involve purchased European-style options (index options)
and written American-style options (stock options), assuming the option portfolio is
hold till expiration overestimates the resulting return to some extent. Yet this happens
for less then 10% of the trades (10 out of 120 for the HC case and 8 out 120 for
the GC case). So the early-exercise eect is minimal. Thus we stick to the original
assumption and avoid going through the complicated exercising procedure. The results
are presented Panel A and Panel B of Table 5. Conditioning the trading strategy on the
implied correlation improves the trading results. The mean returns increase to 12.7%
and 14.1% when historical and GARCH-forecasted correlations are used to forecast
future correlation respectively. Sharpe ratios increase to 0.70 and 0.79 respectively.
Consistently, increases to 0.14 (HC) and 0.15 (GC) for equation (8), and 0.04 (HC)
and 0.09 (GC) for equation (9), when conditioning trades are undertaken.
Therefore, we nd that adjusting dispersion strategies based on implied correlation
helps improve the performance of the naive strategy. However, just as with the naive
dispersion strategy, the performance of the conditioning dispersion strategies diers over
the two subperiods 19962000 and 20012005. When trades are based on comparing his-
torical correlation with implied correlation, the Sharpe ratio is 1.17 before 2001 and 0.12
after 2001. Similarly, when GARCH-forecasted correlation is used as the benchmark,
the Sharpe ratio decreases from 1.38 for the subperiod 19962000 to 0.07 for the subpe-
riod 20012005. We further examine whether the dierences in returns between the two
subperiods are statistically signicant. As presented in Table 6, t-statistics are 1.92 and
2.33, supporting the hypothesis that the returns are signicantly lower during the later
subperiod. The estimated coecients for the dummy regression of equation (10) are
0.23 and 0.27, respectively, for these two benchmarks, and are both signicant at 5%
level. Similarly, the estimated coecients for equation (11) are 0.28 and 0.30, with
22
t-stats of 2.47 and 2.74 respectively. Thus, we nd that conditioning the dispersion
strategy on implied correlation yields results similar to those of the naive strategy.
B. Delta-hedged Dispersion Trading
The naive dispersion strategy involves positions on near-ATM straddles which have very
low delta at the time the positions are opened. Therefore, initially, the delta exposure
of the dispersion trades are very low. However, as the prices of the underlying stocks
change, the deltas of the straddle positions will also change, leading to higher exposure to
delta risk. For individual stock options, delta risk could be hedged with the underlying
stock. For index options, since index is a weighted average of its component stocks,
their delta exposure can also be hedged using its component stocks. We conduct the
dispersion trading strategy the same as before except that the delta-exposure is hedged
daily using the S&P 500 components stocks. Specically, the long leg of the dispersion
trade has a delta exposure to stock i as:

long
i,t
=
Call
i,t
+
Put
i,t
, (16)
where
Call
i,t
and
Put
i,t
are the Black-Scholes deltas of stock i at time t respectively.The
short leg has a delta exposure to stock i as:

short
i,t
= n
i,t
(
Call
I,t
+
Put
I,t
), (17)
where
Call
I,t
and
Put
I,t
are the Black-Scholes deltas of S&P500 index at time t respec-
tively. We compute the Black-Sholes delta at the close of trading each day between the
investment date and the expiration date using closing stock prices and index level, the
time to expiration, and the dividends paid during the remaining life of the option. The
volatility rate is the annualized sample volatility using daily log returns over the prior 22
23
trading days and the interest rate is the continuously compounded one-month LIBOR
rate at the time the position is opened.
Therefore, the dispersion positions delta exposure to stock i is

all
i,t
=
long
i,t

short
i,t
. (18)
We hedge this risk at the investment date by selling
all
i,t
units of stock i at closing
price. Each day during the life of the trade, we rebalance the delta-position so that the
trade keeps delta-neutral until the expiration date. The return of the daily delta-hedged
dispersion strategy is
V
T
V
t

T1
s=t

N
i=1
n
i,s

all
i,s
(S
i,s+1
+D
i,s
S
i,s
)e
r(Ts)
V
t

N
i=1
n
i,t

all
i,t
(S
i,t
e
r(Tt)
)
. (19)
The return after transaction costs is dened in the similar fashion as equation (7).
Panel C of Table 5 summarizes the returns of the delta-hedged dispersion strategy.
With delta exposures of the portfolio daily-rehedged using the 500 component stocks, the
average return increases from 10.7% for the naive strategy to 15.2% now. The standard
deviation of strategy decreases from 0.628 to 0.592, and the Sharpe ratio goes up from
0.59 to 0.89. Estimated intercepts from regressions of equation (8) and equation (9)
both rise to 0.16. Hence, delta-hedging can make dispersion strategy perform better by
increasing the average returns without incurring more risk.
4
Looking at the performance
over the pre-2000 and post-2000 periods, we nd that the pre-2000 return increases from
24% to 27.5% and post-2000 rises from2.6% to 3.2%. Similarly, both Sharpe ratios and
alphas for the two subperiods are enhanced over those for the naive dispersion strategy.
However, tests of changing protability presented in Table 6 supports the hypothesis
that the performance of the daily-delta hedged dispersion strategy decrease signicantly
from 19962000 to 20012005. The is -0.29 and t-stat is 2.28, which are both signicant
at 5% level.
4
Transaction costs of trading stocks are not taken into account here, which might be signicant.
24
C. Using a subset of the component stocks
The next step to improve the strategy is to pick the best component stocks to buy
straddles on. Table I have shown that transaction costs are substantial in options market.
By selecting a subset of the component stock options to execute the dispersion trades,
we are actually reducing the transaction costs involved in the strategy and thus might
increase the return after transaction costs. Our selection method follows the procedure
in Su (2005), which selects the optimal subset of component stocks using Principal
Component Analysis (PCA). PCA is one of the popular data mining tools to reduce
the dimensions in multivariate data by choosing the most eective orthogonal factors to
explain the original multivariate variables. Specically, stock selection is completed in
three steps as follows:
Step 1 On each investment date, nd the covariance matrix using the historical
returns of all component stocks as below
_

2
1,t

2
1,t

1,t

2,t

1,t

2,t

12,t

1,t

N,t

1,t

N,t

1N,t

1,t

2,t

1,t

2,t

12,t

2
2,t

2
2,t

2,t

N,t

2,t

N,t

2N,t
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

1,t

N,t

1,t

N,t

1N,t

2,t

N,t

2,t

N,t

2N,t

2
N,t

2
N,t
_

_
where
i,t
and
ij,t
are the realized standard deviation of return of stock i and the realized
correlation between returns of stock i and stockj, calculated over the one year period
prior to the investment date t, and
i,t
is the index weights of stock i at investment date
t.
Step 2 Decompose the covariance matrix into the eigenvalue vector ordered by im-
portance and the corresponding eigenvectors. Choose the rst n principal components
such that the cumulative proportion of the explained variance is above 90%.
25
Step 3 Select the subset of 100 stocks which have the highest cumulative correlation
with the principal components chosen in step 2.
After the subset of stocks is selected, we implement the original dispersion strategy
by buying the index straddles and selling individual straddles on this 100 stocks.
Panel D of Table 5 displays the trading results. We nd that the average return of
the strategy increases from 10.7% per month to 29.5% per month and is signicantly
positive with a t-statistic of 2.19. Because the standard deviation also increases to 1.48,
the resulting Sharpe ratio rises only to 0.69. In addition, increases to 0.28 and is
statistically signicant at 5% level. When we examine the performance of the subsetting
strategy in the two subperiods of 19962000 and 20012005, we nd similar results as
previous adjusted dispersion strategies. The average return is 51.1% and statistically
signicant prior to 2001 and then drops to 8% and insignicant after 2001. The Sharpe
ratio decreases from 1.05 to 0.23. And the estimated intercepts for equation (8) and
equation (9) both decreases from 0.58 to 0.04 and 0.52 to 0.18 respectively. Table 6
presents the test results for a structural change at the end of 2000. We nd a marginally
signicant t-statistic and signicant coecients for equation (10) and equation (11).
Hence, the subsetting dispersion strategy yields the same results as other strategiesthe
prots disappear over the 2001-2005 subperiod.
D. Trading Index Strangles and Individual Straddles
Finally, we make the last attempt to enhance the performance of the primitive dispersion
strategy. Previous studies have shown that out-of-the-money put options yields are
priced highest among dierent index option series. See, for example, Bollen and Whaley
(2004), who shows that a delta-hedged trading strategy that sells S&P 500 index options
is most protable for selling out-of-the-money put index options. In addition, at-the-
money individual call options are priced relatively lower than other individual option
series. So, we still stick to near-ATM individual straddles on the long side of the strategy.
26
We expect that a strategy that longs individual at-the-money straddles and shorts index
out-of-the-money can produce a higher return than a dispersion strategy that trades at-
the-money straddles for both index and index component stocks.
The general setup is the same as previous strategies, except that out-of-the-money
index options are selected instead to trade against individual at-the-money straddles.
We select out-of-the-money index options as follows: rst, we restrict the sample of
index options such that 1.05 <= K/S < 1.1 for call options and 0.90 < K/S <= 0.95
for put options, where S is the index value at investment date, K is the option strike
price; then, we select options with strike prices closest to 1) 1.05S for call options and
2) 0.95S for put options.
Panel E of Table 5 shows that this strategy produces a mean return of 10%. As pre-
dicted, this strategy turns out to be much more protable than the primitive dispersion
strategy that sells at-the-money index straddles. Although the average return is not
higher than that of the simplest trading strategy, we nd that this strategy has a much
smaller standard deviation of 0.392 compared to 0.628 for the primitive strategy. Thus,
it yields a more signicant t-statistic of 2.81. The Sharpe ratio is 0.89, much higher
than that of the simplest strategy (0.58). Moreover, we nd the of the strategy is 0.08
and signicantly positive with a t-statistic of 2.41. Consistent with previous results, this
strategy is more protable over the subperiod 1996-2000 than the subperiod 2001-2005.
We nd the mean monthly return decreases from a strongly signicant 19.4% to a non-
signicant 0.7%. Similarly, the Sharpe ratio drops from 2 to 0.05, and s go down from
0.21 to 0.01 and from 0.17 to 0.13 respectively for equation (8) and equation (9).
Again, both dummy regressions and t-tests presented in Table 6 support the conclusion
that the protability of the strategy decreases signicantly around 2000.
Therefore, all of the adjusted strategies studies accomplish the task of beating the
performance of the primitive dispersion strategy. And the daily-delta-hedged dispersion
strategy and the one that sells OTM index strangles work best among them. Yet we
27
nd all strategies perform signicantly worse after 2000. So the changing protability
result we nd for the primitive dispersion strategy still holds.
VI. Implications
As noted in Section III, investigating whether the performance of dispersion strategies
changes following the structural changes in the options market around 2000 allows us
to distinguish between the risk-based hypothesis and the market ineciency hypothesis.
The risk-based hypothesis argues that index options are overpriced versus individual
options because correlation risk, which is only present in index options, is negatively
priced in equilibrium. The market-ineciency hypothesis explains the overpricing of
index options as the result of the demand pressure eect. The evidence we nd in the
last section indicates that dispersion strategies become unprotable after 2000. This is
in support of the market ineciency hypothesis because if the correlation risk premium
embedded in the index options is a fundamental market factor then it should not be
aected by market structural changes, unless the correlation between changes in stock
return correlations and the stochastic discount factor happens to change too around
2000.
After the bursting of the internet bubbles starting from March 2000, it is possible
that changes in correlation are more predictable after 2000. This makes the forecast risk
of correlation lower during the post-2000 period and could possible explain the reduced
protability of dispersion strategies after 2000. To address this concern, we want to test
whether the forecast risk of realized correlation changed signicantly around 2000. Here,
forecast risks are measured as the variance of forecast errors. To do this, I assume that
the forecast errors of correlation e
t2000
during the pre-2000 period and e
t2001
during
the post-2000 period follow the following distribution:
e
t2000
N(
1
,
2
1
), (20)
28
e
t2001
N(
2
,
2
2
). (21)
The null hypothesis is
H
0
:
2
1
=
2
2
, (22)
while the alternative hypothesis is
H
a
:
2
1
>
2
2
. (23)
Table 7 presents the means and standard deviations of two dierent measures of the
forecast errors. The rst measure is IC
t
RC
t
, the dierence between implied correlation
and realized correlation. The second is GC
t
RC
t
, the dierence between GARCH-
forecasted correlation and realized correlation. The rst measure IC
t
RC
t
has a mean
of 0.096 over the subperiod 19962000 and 0.051 over the subperiod 20012005. A test
of dierence in means conrms that the decrease in the dierence between IC
t
and
RC
t
is statistically signicant. This is consistent with the diminishing protability of
dispersion strategies we nd in Section IV and Section V. Figure 2 plots the implied
correlation versus the realized average correlation over our sample period. Indeed, the
mean dierence between implied correlation and realized correlation has diminished over
time since 2001. The second measure does not change signicantly from before and after
2000. This is not surprising, as there is no reason to expect GARCH models to perform
better because of changes to market environment.
Next, we examine the standard deviations of the two measures of the forecast errors.
We nd that the standard deviation for the rst measure does not dier much over
the two subperiods, being 0.113 and 0.094 respectively. And a test of equal variances
cannot reject the null hypothesis H
0
. Similarly, for the second measure, GC
t
RC
t
,
the standard deviation is 0.107 rst and then 0.093. And the F-test statistic of equal
variance is insignicant as well. These ndings do not support the hypothesis that
forecast risk of correlation has reduced a lot since 2001. Thus there is no evidence that
prots to dispersion strategies disappear because of the reduced forecast risk.
29
In fact, practitioners seem to have reached a consensus that the protability of dis-
persion trading has diminished over time, especially after 2000. For example, according
to Robert Brett, a partner at Brett & Higgins, It (volatility dispersion strategy) is also
a strategy that, through market eciency and the sophistication of the participants, has
been arbed to death, leaving only marginal prot potential.
5
Andy Webb, at Egar
Technology, said that, Under the relatively benign conditions that prevailed up until
the summer of 2000, dispersion trading was a reliable money-maker that didnt require
much in the way of sophisticated modelling.
6
The improvement of options market e-
ciency could have led the change of protability of dispersion trading strategy. Figure 3
plots the implied correlation of DOWJONES industrial average versus the realized av-
erage correlation on every Wednesday from October, 1997 till December, 2005.
7
Similar
to SPX, the dierence between DJX s implied correlation and realized correlation has
diminished over time, especially after 2000. This conrms that the eroded protabil-
ity of dispersion strategy is not specic to SPX and might happen to other indices as
well. Multiple listings and introduction of ISE have made options cheaper to trade than
before and more money have owed into the options market. In addition, the availabil-
ity of OptionMetrics and software support of Egartech around 2000 have given people
the chance to trade away remaining arbitrage opportunities of dispersion strategy. The
reduced performance of dispersion strategies suggests the prots to dispersion trading
dont result from priced correlation risk. Therefore, our results are in support of the
market ineciency hypothesis by Bollen and Whaley (2004) and Garleanu, Pedersen
and Poteshman (2005).
5
Smith, Steven, Using Dispersion: A High Concept at a Low Cost, TheStreet.com, July, 2003.
6
Dispersion of Risk, FOW, December 2001.
7
DJX starts trading options from September, 24, 1997
30
VII. Conclusion
A number of studies have tried to explain the relative expensiveness of index options and
the dierent properties that index option and individual option prices display. The two
hypotheses that are prevalent is that 1) index options bear a risk premium lacking from
individual options, and 2) option market demand and supply drive the option prices
from their Black-Sholes values. Institutional changes in the option market in late 1999
and 2000, including cross-listing of options, the launch of the International Securities
Exchange, a Justice Department investigation and settlement, and a marked reduction in
bid-oer spreads, provide a natural experiment that allows one to distinguish between
these hypotheses. Specically, these changes in the market environment reduced the
costs of arbitraging any dierential pricing of individual equity and index options via
dispersion trading. If the protability of dispersion trading is due to miss-pricing of
index options relative to individual equity options, one would expect the protability
of dispersion trading to be much reduced after 2000. In contrast, if the dispersion
trading is compensation for bearing correlation risk, the change in the option market
structure should not aect the protability of this strategy. In this study, we show
that the primitive dispersion strategy, as well as several improved dispersion strategies
that revise the primitive dispersion strategies by conditioning,delta-hedging, subsetting,
using index out-of-the-money strangles, are much more protable before 2000 and then
become unprotable. This provides evidence that risk-based stories cannot fully explain
the dierential pricing anomaly. Future work on how implied volatilities of index options
and individual options behave after the structural change might help us understand the
specic source for the loss of protability of dispersion strategies.
31
References
[1] Bakshi, Gurdip, and Nikunj Kapadia, 2003, Volatility risk premium embedded in
individual equity options: Some new insights, Journal of Derivatives, 4554.
[2] Bakshi, Gurdip, Nikunj Kapadia, and Dilip Madan, 2003, Stock return characteris-
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[3] Bettalio, Robert, Brian Hatch, and Robert Jennings, 2004, Toward a national market
system for U.S. exchange-listed equity options, Journal of Finance 59,933962.
[4] Bollen, Nicolas P., and Robert E. Whaley, 2004, Does Net Buying Pressure Aect
the Shape of Implied Volatility Functions?, Journal of Finance 59, 711753.
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[6] Branger, Nicole, and Christian Schlag, 2004, Why is the index smile so steep?, Review
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[7] Carr, Peter, and Liuren Wu, 2008, Variance Risk Premia, Review of Financial Stud-
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[11] Dennis, Patrick, Stewart Mayhew, and Chris Stivers, 2006, Stock returns, implied
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[12] Driessen, Joost, Pascal Maenhout, and Grigory Vilkov, 2006, Option-implied cor-
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[13] Garleanu, Nicolae, Lasse Heje Pedersen, and Allen M. Poteshman, 2006, Demand-
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[15] Jorion, P., 2000, Risk management lessons from Long-term capital management,
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[16] Lakonishok, Josef, Inmoo Lee, Neil D. Pearson, and Allen M. Poteshman, 2007,
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nance 52, 3555.
[20] Su, Xia, 2005, Hedging basket options by using a subset of underlying assets, Work-
ing paper, University of Bonn.
33
Figure 1. Median Bid-ask Spread Ratios for Call Options and Put Options from 1996
to 2005
Panel A displays the median bid-ask spread ratios, measured as bid-ask spreads over bid-ask midpoints,
of our sample call options from 1996 to 2005. Panel B shows the median bid-ask spread ratios for put
options.
Panel A: Median Spread Ratios for Call options
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36
Table 1
Summary Information for Options in Sample, January 1996 December
2005
This table includes summary information of SPX index options and individual equity options of SPX
component stocks, by 5 moneyness categories, on the 144 investments dates from January,1996 to
December, 2005. Moneyness categories are dened based on K/S where K is the strike price and S is
the stock/index price.
Panel A. SPX Index Options
Moneyness Categories Open Interest Volume Quote Spread
0.850.90 1123.45 70.88 6.765 5.87%
0.900.95 1604.65 129.14 4.580 7.55%
Call 0.951.00 2415.46 340.52 2.739 10.43%
Options 1.001.05 2809.21 544.31 1.394 19.76%
1.051.10 2610.38 421.41 0.736 38.80%
1.101.15 2606.83 325.66 0.522 52.03%
0.850.90 1753.84 157.05 0.472 55.02%
0.900.95 1772.15 214.59 0.707 40.86%
Put 0.951.00 1828.33 313.60 1.335 20.61%
Options 1.001.05 1375.65 199.04 2.589 11.06%
1.051.10 914.30 80.17 4.359 7.82%
1.101.15 729.38 44.02 6.174 6.22%
Median 1618.57 195.74 4.610 6.78%
Panel B. Equity Options on SPX Components
Moneyness Categories Open Interest Volume Quote Spread
0.850.90 2786.53 29.50 136.34 1.40%
0.900.95 3898.46 66.34 85.75 2.22%
Call 0.951.00 7637.78 538.53 40.77 4.66%
Options 1.001.05 9903.86 1625.95 11.66 11.02%
1.051.10 10024.34 1619.68 2.49 38.20%
1.101.15 7408.05 519.72 0.71 71.68%
0.850.90 13574.17 1311.00 1.98 30.07%
0.900.95 14480.91 2645.65 4.26 17.62%
Put 0.951.00 12130.68 1926.13 12.44 9.30%
Options 1.001.05 6302.45 750.46 35.39 5.26%
1.051.10 3254.67 109.24 77.28 2.72%
1.101.15 2899.13 67.19 124.43 1.81%
Median 8205.49 980.52 54.83 9.52%
Table 2
Test of Changing Bid-Ask Spread
This table reports the results of testing for a dierence in the bid-ask spreads between 19962000 and
20012005. The top 100 largest stocks that are included in S&P 500 over the whole sample period are
selected. On each investment date, we rst take an average of bid-ask spreads for all the call options
with the same underlying stock. We then average the results over the 100 stocks and test whether this
value before 2001 is dierent from that after 2001. The same test is implemented with put options.
Median Bid-ask Spread Test
Options Type 19962000 20012005 Statistic p-value
Call 0.109 0.076 10.10 < 0.0001
Put 0.128 0.091 8.46 < 0.0001
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.
9
4
0
.
1
1
(
1
.
9
2
)

1
.
4
0
(

1
.
2
3
)
0
.
0
3
(
0
.
4
9
)

2
.
9
4
(

2
.
2
6
)

0
.
0
5
7
(

2
.
3
2
)
1
9
9
6

2
0
0
0
0
.
2
4
0
0
.
6
9
4
2
.
6
8
1
.
2
0
0
.
9
2
0
.
2
9
(
3
.
2
9
)

4
.
7
1
(

1
.
7
2
)
0
.
2
0
(
2
.
1
4
)

7
.
0
7
(

3
.
0
9
)

0
.
0
7
5
(

2
.
2
8
)
2
0
0
1

2
0
0
5

0
.
0
2
6
0
.
5
2
8

0
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3
7

0
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1
7
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9
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0
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(

0
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6
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)
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(
0
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)

0
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1
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(

1
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7
)

0
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6
0
(

0
.
4
1
)

0
.
0
5
2
(

1
.
6
1
)
P
a
n
e
l
B
:
T
h
e
N
a
i
v
e
D
i
s
p
e
r
s
i
o
n
T
r
a
d
i
n
g
S
t
r
a
t
e
g
y
A
d
j
u
s
t
e
d
f
o
r
E
a
r
l
y
-
E
x
e
r
c
i
s
e
-
P
r
e
m
i
u
m
S
h
a
r
p
e
T
e
s
t
o
f
S
a
m
p
l
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P
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r
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d
M
e
a
n
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t
d
.
D
e
v
t
R
a
t
i
o
N
o
r
m
a
l
i
t
y

A
(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)

A
(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)

B
(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)

B
(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)

(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)
A
l
l
0
.
1
1
5
0
.
6
3
4
1
.
9
9
0
.
6
3
0
.
9
4
0
.
1
3
(
2
.
1
5
)

1
.
4
0
(

1
.
2
1
)
0
.
0
5
(
0
.
7
2
)

2
.
9
1
(

2
.
2
1
)

0
.
0
6
(

2
.
2
6
)
1
9
9
6

2
0
0
0
0
.
2
4
7
0
.
7
0
1
2
.
7
3
1
.
2
2
0
.
9
1
0
.
3
0
(
3
.
3
4
)

4
.
7
5
(

1
.
7
4
)
0
.
2
1
(
2
.
1
8
)

7
.
1
4
(

3
.
1
9
)

0
.
0
8
(

2
.
2
8
)
2
0
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1

2
0
0
5

0
.
0
1
7
0
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5
3
2

0
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2
5

0
.
1
1
0
.
9
5

0
.
0
2
(

0
.
2
9
)
0
.
7
3
(
0
.
5
7
)

0
.
0
9
(

1
.
0
8
)

0
.
4
2
(

0
.
2
8
)

0
.
0
5
(

1
.
4
2
)
P
a
n
e
l
C
:
B
r
e
a
k
p
o
i
n
t
S
e
p
t
e
m
b
e
r
1
9
9
9
S
h
a
r
p
e
T
e
s
t
o
f
S
a
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p
l
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P
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M
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t
d
.
D
e
v
t
R
a
t
i
o
N
o
r
m
a
l
i
t
y

A
(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)

A
(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)

B
(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)

B
(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)

(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)
0
1
/
1
9
9
6

0
9
/
1
9
9
9
0
.
2
6
8
0
.
7
6
8
2
.
3
4
1
.
2
1
0
.
9
2
0
.
3
3
(
2
.
9
1
)

2
.
8
7
(

1
.
1
5
)
0
.
2
2
(
1
.
9
0
)

5
.
3
7
(

2
.
7
2
)

0
.
0
7
(

2
.
3
0
)
1
0
/
1
9
9
9

1
2
/
2
0
0
5
0
.
0
1
1
0
.
5
0
8
0
.
7
3
0
.
0
7
0
.
9
7
-
0
.
0
0
(
-
0
.
0
0
)
0
.
0
3
(
0
.
0
3
)

0
.
0
7
(

0
.
9
8
)

1
.
0
5
(

0
.
8
3
)

0
.
0
5
(

1
.
6
8
)
P
a
n
e
l
D
:
B
r
e
a
k
p
o
i
n
t
J
a
n
u
a
r
y
2
0
0
2
S
h
a
r
p
e
T
e
s
t
o
f
S
a
m
p
l
e
P
e
r
i
o
d
M
e
a
n
S
t
d
.
D
e
v
t
R
a
t
i
o
N
o
r
m
a
l
i
t
y

A
(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)

A
(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)

B
(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)

B
(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)

(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)
0
1
/
1
9
9
6

0
1
/
2
0
0
2
0
.
1
7
7
0
.
6
8
1
2
.
2
2
0
.
9
0
0
.
9
3
0
.
1
9
(
2
.
3
1
)

1
.
4
8
(

0
.
9
6
)
0
.
1
2
(
1
.
2
5
)

2
.
8
5
(

1
.
6
0
)

0
.
0
5
(

1
.
4
7
)
0
2
/
2
0
0
2

1
2
/
2
0
0
5

0
.
0
0
1
0
.
5
2
4

0
.
0
2

0
.
0
1
0
.
9
5

0
.
0
1
(

0
.
1
1
)

1
.
0
4
(

0
.
6
4
)

0
.
1
1
(

1
.
2
2
)

2
.
8
8
(

1
.
5
8
)

0
.
0
9
(

2
.
0
3
)
Table 4
Test of Changing Protability of the Naive Dispersion Strategy under
Dierent Scenarios
This table reports the results of testing for a change in the protability of the naive dispersion trading
strategies at the end of 2000. Panel A reports the results of a simple t-test of dierence in the mean
returns of the strategy described in the leftmost column over the two subperiods 19962000 and 2001
2005. Panel B reports the estimates coecient, t-stat, and p-value for equation (10). Similarly, Panel
C reports the estimates coecient, t-stat, and p-value for equation (11).
Panel A: Test of dierence in means
Mean
Scenario Description Dierence t-stat p-value
Dispersion strategy 0.27 2.36 0.010
Adjusted for early exercise premium 0.26 2.32 0.011
Breakpoint September/1999 0.26 2.20 0.015
Breakpoint January/2002 0.18 1.61 0.055
Panel B: Regression controlling for market risk
Strategy Description t-stat p-value
Dispersion strategy 0.28 2.51 0.015
Adjusted for early exercise premium 0.27 2.42 0.017
Breakpoint September/1999 0.27 2.29 0.024
Breakpoint January/2002 0.18 1.78 0.078
Panel C: Regression controlling for market risk and variance risk
Strategy Description t-stat p-value
Dispersion strategy 0.31 2.83 0.006
Adjusted for early exercise premium 0.29 2.63 0.096
Breakpoint September/1999 0.28 2.48 0.015
Breakpoint January/2002 0.17 1.44 0.154
T
a
b
l
e
5
R
e
t
u
r
n
s
o
f
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m
p
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p
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)
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l
a
t
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,
2
)
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h
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d
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t
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)
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a
i
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-
d
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t
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d
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d
d
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r
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t
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,
4
)
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b
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t
t
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d
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b
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d
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P
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t
A
n
a
l
y
s
i
s
,
5
)
D
i
s
p
e
r
s
i
o
n
s
t
r
a
t
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g
y
u
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T
M
i
n
d
e
x
s
t
r
a
n
g
l
e
s
.
P
a
n
e
l
A
:
B
a
s
e
d
o
n
I
m
p
l
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e
d
C
o
r
r
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l
a
t
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a
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d
H
i
s
t
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r
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c
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o
r
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l
a
t
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p
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P
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r
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d
M
e
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n
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t
d
.
D
e
v
t
S
h
a
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p
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R
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t
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o
T
e
s
t
o
f
N
o
r
m
a
l
i
t
y

A
(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)

A
(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)

B
(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)

B
(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)

(
t
-
s
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t
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A
l
l
0
.
1
2
7
0
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6
2
4
2
.
2
3
0
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7
0
0
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9
4
0
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1
4
(
2
.
4
5
)

1
.
7
8
(

1
.
5
7
)
0
.
0
4
(
0
.
5
3
)

3
.
7
1
(

2
.
9
1
)
-
0
.
0
7
(

3
.
0
0
)
1
9
9
6

2
0
0
0
0
.
2
3
5
0
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6
9
5
2
.
6
2
1
.
1
7
0
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9
2
0
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2
8
(
3
.
1
6
)

4
.
3
7
(

1
.
6
3
)
0
.
1
9
(
1
.
9
9
)

6
.
8
4
(

2
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8
6
)
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0
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8
(

2
.
3
7
)
2
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1

2
0
0
5
0
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1
9
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5
2
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2
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1
2
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9
6
0
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0
2
(
0
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2
8
)

0
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1
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(

0
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0
9
)

0
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1
2
(

1
.
4
4
)

2
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0
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1
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4
6
)

0
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8
(

2
.
5
2
)
P
a
n
e
l
B
:
B
a
s
e
d
o
n
I
m
p
l
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d
C
o
r
r
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l
a
t
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a
n
d
G
a
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h
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f
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d
C
o
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l
a
t
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S
a
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P
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d
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t
S
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R
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T
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t
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f
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a
l
i
t
y

A
(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)

A
(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)

B
(
t
-
s
t
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t
)

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(
t
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s
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t
)

(
t
-
s
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t
)
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l
0
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1
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8
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4
0
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1
5
(
2
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7
0
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1
.
7
4
(

1
.
5
4
)
0
.
0
9
(
1
.
3
8
)

2
.
8
6
(

2
.
2
0
)

0
.
0
4
(

1
.
6
8
)
1
9
9
6

2
0
0
0
0
.
2
7
1
0
.
6
8
2
3
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1
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3
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9
2
0
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3
2
(
3
.
7
3
)

4
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8
2
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1
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7
8
)
0
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2
6
(
2
.
8
1
)

6
.
3
4
(

3
.
0
3
)

0
.
0
5
(

1
.
4
6
)
2
0
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1

2
0
0
5
0
.
0
1
1
0
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5
2
8
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1
6
0
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1
2
0
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9
6
0
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0
1
(
0
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1
5
)
0
.
1
9
(
0
.
1
5
)

0
.
0
8
(

0
.
9
8
)

1
.
1
0
(

0
.
7
4
)

0
.
0
5
(

1
.
5
6
)
P
a
n
e
l
C
:
D
e
l
t
a
-
h
e
d
g
e
d
D
i
s
p
e
r
s
i
o
n
S
t
r
a
t
e
g
y
S
a
m
p
l
e
P
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r
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o
d
M
e
a
n
S
t
d
.
D
e
v
t
S
h
a
r
p
e
R
a
t
i
o
T
e
s
t
o
f
N
o
r
m
a
l
i
t
y

A
(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)

A
(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)

B
(
t
-
s
t
a
t
)

B
(
t
-
s
t
a
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Table 6
Test of Changing Protability of Improved Dispersion Trading Strategies
This table reports the results of testing for a change in the protability around 2000 for the following
revised dispersion trading strategies: 1) the conditional dispersion strategy based on the comparison
between implied correlation and historical correlation, 2) the conditional dispersion strategy based
on the comparison between implied correlation and GARCH-forecasted correlation, 3) Daily-delta-
hedged dispersion strategy, 4) Subsetting dispersion strategy based on Principal Component Analysis,
5) Dispersion strategy using OTM index strangles. The tests are t-tests of mean dierences, and dummy
regressions are based on equation (10) and equation (11).
Panel A: Test of dierence in means
Mean
Strategy Description Dierence t-stat p-value
Conditioning based on implied correlation vs historical correlation 0.22 1.92 0.029
Conditioning based on implied correlation vs GARCH-forecasted correlation 0.27 2.33 0.011
Daily delta-hedged dispersion strategy 0.24 2.28 0.004
Subsetting based on PCA 0.43 1.78 0.037
Trading OTM index strangles 0.19 2.69 0.004
Panel B: Regression controlling for market risk
Strategy Description t-stat p-value
Conditioning based on implied correlation vs historical correlation 0.23 2.04 0.044
Conditioning based on implied correlation vs GARCH-forecasted correlation 0.27 2.47 0.015
Daily delta-hedged dispersion strategy 0.29 2.18 0.031
Subsetting based on PCA 0.44 2.08 0.040
Trading OTM index strangles 0.17 2.58 0.011
Panel C: Regression controlling for market risk and variance risk
Strategy Description t-stat p-value
Conditioning based on implied correlation vs historical correlation 0.28 2.47 0.015
Conditioning based on implied correlation vs GARCH-forecasted correlation 0.30 2.74 0.007
Daily delta-hedged dispersion strategy 0.25 2.36 0.022
Subsetting based on PCA 0.51 2.29 0.024
Trading OTM index strangles 0.18 2.86 0.005
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